


Before I Ever Met You

by Kangofu_CB



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Present Tense, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 12:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14618511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB
Summary: Duo Maxwell and Trowa Barton aren't soulmates, but something keeps pushing them into one another's paths, and surely they should grab onto whatever makes them happy for however long it lasts, even if it's not meant to be.Because only soulmates get forever.Right?





	Before I Ever Met You

**Author's Note:**

> Hey it's me again, experimenting with my writing style for funsies!
> 
> Almost a 5+1 fic, but not quite. Present tense because that's the personal challenge for this fic.

_Everyone knows I'm right about one thing_

_You are my only vice_

\- Banks

* * *

 

The first time Duo meets Trowa Barton is at a charity gala. Black tie, high end champagne, and enough diamond tennis bracelets to keep Duo flush in cash for a few months at least.

 

He’s worked his way into the good graces of a very pretty heiress, by being just enough bad boy to make her feel rebellious with his long hair and specially-built motorcycle, but with enough self-taught refinement not to embarrass her at formal events.

 

Duo has seen Pretty Woman after all, and knows enough to choose utensils from the outside in at dinner parties, and to smile charmingly at the older wives, with their Botox and carefully constructed surgical enhancements. He can dance and schmooze with the best of them, and he’s always been a rather talented pickpocket, even before he’d set his sights a bit higher.

 

The event itself is being given for some sort of medical charity - cancer, Duo thinks, though he hadn’t been paying much attention to the speeches - and there are several world-renowned surgeons in attendance. And their wives. And the very rich supporters of the cause.

 

Easy pickings, as far as Duo is concerned.

 

Duo has his left hand at the small of Brianna’s back, a glass of champagne in his right, when a tall, handsome, distinguished-looking man drifts over, clearly following Brianna’s father, with a look of bemusement on his face. Something about him seems familiar, but Duo can’t place what it is, exactly. Green eyes, perfectly symmetrical features, lips lifted in a small smirk.

 

Of course, Duo knows what’s happening immediately, and he lifts his glass to smile around the rim.

 

“Brianna!” Her father booms, ignoring Duo completely.

 

“Hello daddy,” she answers, and Duo can see the humor shining in her eyes.

 

They have no illusions between them. Duo is a pretty face and a fun time, and Brianna is a sweet girl with a bit of a wild streak, and their time together is only temporary. Brianna’s father, on the other hand, doesn’t understand at all, and there have been no end of ‘suitable’ suitors ever since Brianna brought Duo - currently going by Daniel - home the first time.  

 

They certainly aren’t soulmates - the name wrapped around Brianna’s ankle in her pretty, curling script is Jonathan Lucas.

 

“This is Dr. Tomas Baztan,” her father continues, still in his booming voice.  “He’s finishing his surgical residency at Memorial this year. Tomas, this is my daughter Brianna, that I’ve been telling you about.”

 

“Pleased to meet you,” Dr. Baztan says, voice tinged with that same vague amusement Duo can see in his expression, at the back of his eyes. But Duo’s more distracted by the thrill that the deep tone of his voice sends down his spine.

 

Duo drains the remainder of his champagne and leans over to brush his lips across Brianna’s cheek. “I’m going to find another drink Bri, would you like one?”

 

He can feel the barely there vibration of laughter in her back.

 

This is what he likes about her.

 

“No thank you, Daniel. I think we’ll be leaving soon enough, won’t we?”

 

He smirks as he drops his hand from her bare skin. “Whatever you’d like, my dear.”

 

As he turns to go, he winks at Dr. Baztan on his way to the bar.

 

*

 

The second time they meet, it’s on opposite sides of the ubiquitous bars of a jail cell.

 

Baztan - who, Duo notices with some amusement, is wearing a nametag that identifies him as Deputy Barnes - arches an eyebrow at him as he passes down the hallway, and Duo shoots him a half-assed salute from where he’s slumped on one of the benches in the back of the cell.  He’s well away from the sloppy assholes who had caused all the trouble that had landed them in the drunk tank of the local small-town jail, and he’s hoping to slip out of here before they start booking and fingerprinting.

 

He’s currently masquerading as Derek Park, but his flimsy identity isn’t going to hold up to any sort of legal scrutiny.

 

Duo doesn’t know his real name - his birth name - because he’s one of many leftover war orphans, his vital information lost forever.  The name he gave himself, the one that’s documented in the system and has a record in the juvenile court system, is Duo Maxwell. He’s a long way from that now, and he doesn’t have anything that he knows of floating around on record as an adult, but it’s still better to be gone than to be booked.  

 

He hadn’t even meant to get involved in the bar fight, but then again he’s never been able to stand around and watch anyone get bullied, let alone a small blonde woman who reminded him entirely too much of a kindly nun.

 

Interesting that he’s seen a familiar face here though. It hardly seems likely that the young doctor and the sheriff’s deputy are the same person - slightly more likely that they’re a random set of twins, but the names don’t match anyway.  It appears that someone of Duo’s particular sort of crowd may be wandering around impersonating either doctors, or cops, or both.

 

It’s at the exact moment that he’s pondering how best he might make use of this information when all the lights in the jail go out, leaving only the measly glow of backup emergency lights to illuminate the rows of cells in the containment area.

 

It takes Duo only a few seconds to jimmy the lock on the cell - they never bother to check his hair well enough, he thinks with a smirk - and he slips out the smallest possible opening before sliding the door back into place, none of his alcohol marinated cellmates even noticing as they blink blearily around at the ceiling lights.  He’s nearly out of the building, heading directly for a quiet corner door marked ‘exit’ in glowing red letters when he sees Baztan, or Barnes, or whoever he is. They exchange a silent nod, and Duo slips into the darkness of night, his hands tucked into his pockets as he walks away from the police station, all studied nonchalance.

 

Interesting guy, whoever he is.

 

*

 

The third time they meet, Duo is leaning against the wall of a penthouse suite, watching the raucous New Year’s Eve party with a practiced eye.  His ‘date’ for the evening is well on his way to sloppy drunk, and Duo wants to make sure he doesn’t become to unmanageable.

 

He doesn’t like messy.

 

Pretty Green Eyes, as Duo has taken to calling the man in his mind, when he chances to think of him, appears silently beside him, drink in head.  For several long minutes, neither of them speaks, and Duo can tell, just _knows_ , that the other man is trying to determine which partygoer is the object of Duo’s attention.

 

“Honey trap?” The other man mutters over the edge of his glass, and Duo snorts in amusement.

 

The name on his hip, written in his own spikey, near-illegible script, sounds more like a hothouse flower than a person.  It’d be damn near impossible to run a honey trap unless some other unlucky bastard was named Triton Bloom and was _not_ Duo’s soulmate.  And it’d have to be some rich, stupid, unlucky bastard.

 

“I’ve never run a honey trap in my life,” Duo defends, but without malice.  It’s not like he hasn’t considered it. “I’m just a pretty face and a winning personality,” he adds, glancing over to smirk at the man next to him.

 

One eyebrow arches over those green eyes; eyes that Duo can tell now have flecks of gold around the edges, and he wonders why he even cares.  “A call- an escort then?”

 

Duo laughs out loud, both at the near slip-up, a _call girl_ , and the implication.

 

“Naw, just a good old-fashioned date.  One that might leave my very willing and enthusiastic partner with slightly lighter pockets.”  He takes another sip of his drink - top shelf whiskey, the really good stuff. Much better than what the bar had served him, the last time he’d seen his new friend.  “Why do you ask _officer_?  Or should I say doctor?”

 

Pretty Green Eyes huffs his own amusement.  “Trowa Barton,” he says instead, and Duo blinks in surprise.

 

“That your real name?” he asks, just because he’s curious, and not because he cares.

 

“As close as I have to one,” the other man answers.

 

Ah.  This, Duo understands.  And he isn’t Triton Bloom, either, and Duo can’t help the small stab of disappointment that curls in his gut.

 

“Duo Maxwell,” he offers in return.

 

Trowa reaches out with his glass, and Duo taps it with his own in a silent toast.

 

*

 

Their fourth meeting is a lot more eventful than the first three.  

 

Duo has slipped out the back door of the club he chose for the evening.  He’s looking for a quiet moment and maybe a quick smoke. It’s an awful habit, one he’s tried to give up a dozen times, and fallen back into just as many.  He’s not working a mark tonight, or a job at all, really, just out blowing off steam and trying to blend in with the normal people. He’s digging in the pocket of his too-tight jeans when none other than Pretty Green Eyes - Trowa Barton, his mind automatically supplies - comes careening around the corner and looking, for lack of a better word, frantic.

 

Duo can hear the footfalls in the distance, the ones that mean several other people are coming in a hurry, and Duo may not know Trowa Barton well, or at all, but he knows trouble better than he knows his own name - real or made up.  

 

The man in front of him is flushed and panting, moving quickly and with purpose, but not quite running, and he can see there’s nowhere to go.  The club backs into a dead end alley, and the door is flat - no handle on the outside, can only be opened from within. His nostrils flare as he takes in deep, gulping breaths and his eyes dart around for escape.

 

Duo makes a quick, split-second decision.

 

He could knock on the door.  Neal, the bouncer, would let him back in, _will_ let him back in, but he’ll have a lot of questions about Trowa.  Questions that won’t be easily answered, and certainly won’t be quick.  He sees the moment that Trowa recognizes him, sees the faint hint of almost-relief, quickly replaced by wariness with an undercurrent of hope, and Duo rolls his eyes before jerking his head in a quick ‘come here’ motion.

 

Trowa takes a hesitant step forward as Duo shuffles off to the side, away from the light near the door, deeper into the shadows and, unfortunately for his nose, closer to the dumpster.  A sudden shout in the not-so-distant night spurs Trowa into motion, and the tall man is striding towards Duo with a sort of purposefulness and grace that makes Duo swallow roughly.

 

Three steps and they’re in the shadows of the building and the steel dumpster, and Duo tilts his face up invitingly.

 

Kissing a stranger isn’t even close to one of the most intimate things he’s ever done for a mark, or to avoid trouble, or to escape detection, and it’s certainly no hardship to kiss this stranger - the one who’s haunted his dreams and played a starring role in his fantasies for months.

 

Trowa is hovering over him, close enough that Duo can feel the body heat radiating off of the other man, and he reaches out, sliding a hand across Trowa’s lower back to rest just above the waist of his jeans.  His thumb strokes the damp skin he finds there, and Trowa shudders, hard. Trowa, in turn, wraps his right hand around Duo’s left hip, and Duo can’t help the sharp intake of breath that follows the touch, especially as Trowa’s fingertips slide under his shirt and graze bare skin.

 

Skin that is permanently marked with another man’s name, but it feels like electricity when Trowa touches him.

 

People usually avoid touching other peoples’ marks.  The names that aren’t their own, the writing like black ink across the spot that your soulmate will touch for the first time.  Duo doesn’t know what it’s like to have a soulmate touch him - he’s never met his - but he imagines it’s similar to this. He’s heard, from a few people, that when your soulmate first says their name to you, it’s like lightning down your spine, but no one has ever said the name on his hip.

 

They’re staring at each other in the dark, faces bare centimeters apart when the scuff of a boot on concrete alerts Duo to the fact that they are about to have company, and he wonders how good a look they got of Trowa before he evaded them.

 

“They might recognize my clothes,” Trowa answers the question Duo hadn’t had to ask, and with a quick twist, Duo is pressing Trowa against the brick of the building, their positions reversed, and his mouth is on Trowa’s and oh god it is _glorious_.

 

He forgets, for a moment, what the circumstances are, why they’re pressed together from knees to chest, forgets everything except the taste of Trowa under his lips, the feel of Trowa under his hands.  He’s dragging his hands from Trowa’s back to his hips, from his hips to his shoulders, until one hand is cupping Trowa’s jaw and the other is buried in the strands of hair at the back of his head.

 

Trowa, for his part, seems equally involved, though he’s left his hands at Duo’s waist, choosing to shove them under Duo’s shirt and stroke across his back and shoulders, returning Duo’s kiss with unparalleled enthusiasm.

 

Duo is sliding his thigh between Trowa’s legs when the footfalls round the corner into the dead end alley and come to a halt.  He ignores them, or appears to, even as he counts steps and listens for movement. Four or five guys, he thinks, heavy from the sound of their feet on the pavement, and goes on kissing Trowa.

 

And kissing him.  And kissing him.

 

They are muttering amongst themselves, clearly wondering where Trowa could have gotten to, and Duo is careful to keep himself between them and Trowa, careful to make sure his own black shirt and jeans are blocking the lighter colored top Trowa is wearing.  Trowa is still kissing him back, still stroking his skin, but he is also slouching, stooping, low enough that Duo has to lean down rather than up as he should, obscuring his height from his would-be attackers.

 

It is an eternity, and simultaneously not long enough, when the thugs leave, shuffling out of the alley, kicking cans and grumbling to themselves.

 

It is still a few minutes later before Duo and Trowa disentangle themselves and their lips.

 

Trowa remains leaning against the wall, still flushed and panting, but for entirely different reasons.

 

Duo admires how red and swollen his mouth looks, how wrecked his expression is.

 

“Anytime you need to pull off a quick hide-in-plain-sight, feel free to give me a call Barton,” Duo smirks, even as he raps sharply on the back door of the club.  Neal opens it and Duo steps inside, giving Trowa one last backwards glance and grin as he does so.

 

The other man is still slouching against the wall, watching him with considering eyes, and Duo wonders when he’ll see him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Look for Trowa's POV in the next chapter!


End file.
